300: Rise Of An Empire: Debut Poster Conquers The Seas

300: Rise of an Empire, the blood-soaked sequel to 2006's original 300 gets set for another tour de force of ferocity with the debut of its first teaser poster.

The image would come via tweet from the previous film's director, Zack Snyder (certainly riding high from that awesome new Man of Steel trailer), who stays on as producer and has penned an entirely original script in same spirit of the Frank Miller graphic novel that inspired the predecessor project. Because of that originality, much of the details of this film were somewhat of a mystery. -- That was, until last week, when the first ever images and some plot details from director, Noam Murro hit. At that point, it was clear that, while the visual composition would be aligned with Snyder's original film, the setting of this film's signature stylized grandiose battles and its protagonists would actually be quite different.

The poster fully sports our new protagonist in the Athenian general, Themistokles played by Sullivan Stapleton. Unlike Gerard Butler's vicious and diplomat-dispatching King Leonidas, Themistokles is not a king, but rather, a figure who must walk the line between being a military leader and a politician. It is that dynamic which he will carry into the film's six reported battles, including the introduction to a new theater to the quasi-historical warfare of the 300 mythos: The seas. While the Au-obsessed wannabe deity, Xerxes is back as overlord of the Persian empire, Themistokles' primary opponent will actually be someone far fairer in the calculating female Persian general named Artemisia, played by Eva Green.

300: Rise of an Empire possibly uses sexual tension to dramatize massive bloody massacres when it hits theaters on August 2. Check out the poster below!